Smallholder farmers

Smallholder farmers have long had difficulties getting a fair price for their produce. A recent IIED webinar discussed how linking farmers to commodity exchanges and an ‘incentive-based’ contract farming (IBCF) approach can help improve farmer-buyer relations and establish more transparent trading arrangements

Unequal bargaining power often characterises the relationship between small-scale rural producers and agribusinesses. A recent IIED webinar discussed ways to protect and support farmers when negotiating with companies

Smallholder and community carbon projects have shown they can deliver local benefits and promote climate resilience. Now the Plan Vivo Standard and its partners, representing the oldest ethical carbon standard, have pledged their commitment to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals

See how IIED's work during the International Year of Family Farming helped to raise the profile of family and smallholder farming and its contribution to eradicating hunger, reducing rural poverty and more

IIED is working with partners in China, India, Kenya and Peru to revitalise traditional knowledge-based – or 'biocultural' – innovation systems of smallholder farmers to strengthen food security in the face of climate change. Traditional farmers continually improve and adapt their crops and farming practices in response to new challenges, using local knowledge and biodiversity, generating new technologies and practices

Smallholder farmers will soon be better able to weigh up the cost and benefits of adopting new practices that support some of the most overlooked contributors to global food security — the insects and other animals that pollinate their crops and boost yields.

Across the developing world, food systems and supply chains are changing — exports are rising, particularly in fresh foods, supermarkets are playing an increasingly important role and there is a growing number of standards for safety, ethics and environment.

In The Hague, Stockholm and Paris we have heard the call for more support to producer organisations through which small-scale farmers can have a voice in the market. This call was re-iterated at the latest IIED/HIVOS provocation ‘Making markets work for smallholders or wage labour?’ — held in Manchester, United Kingdom, last week, in collaboration with The University of Manchester.

Within development circles, there’s a common, if recent, mantra that the key to reducing poverty in the global South lies in investing in agriculture. Increasingly that investment focuses on building bridges between small-scale farmers and private markets in approaches known as ‘markets for the poor’.

The world’s food systems are being squeezed from all sides: rising populations and shifting diets are increasing the global demand for food, while food production is increasingly compromised by climate change and land degradation.

Agriculture is just one of the sectors in which carbon labelling — the labelling of a product to show how much carbon (and other greenhouse gases) have been emitted during its ‘lifecycle’ — is being used to show how individual products contribute to climate change. The logic behind applying carbon labels to agriculture seems sound enough: agriculture accounts for 10 to 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and produces much of the food we eat and the products we buy. Finding a way to tell consumers how much individual agricultural products contribute to this should encourage them to choose those products with the lowest carbon footprint and help make agriculture more sustainable. But the truth is that it is very difficult to provide accurate carbon labels for agricultural products. And carbon labelling can impact farmers in the developing world in ways that don’t support development.

The first of a series of ‘provocative seminars’ on smallholders and the ‘pro-poor markets’ agenda took place in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 28th September 2010. Local and international participants gathered to discuss a series of questions put forward by ‘provocateurs’ from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

IIED, Hivos and collaborating institutions organised a travelling series of ‘provocation’ seminars to challenge conventional wisdom on how to include smallholders in markets and bring fresh perspectives to the discussion on what works and why.

Millions of farmers in Africa depend on export markets for their livelihoods. But recent market trends have led to declining small farmer participation. Yet, these farmers have the skill and soil to provide the high-quality products the food industry seeks. This collaborative initiative engaged with research, civil society and private sector partners to develop new business models across a variety of sectors that enable smallholders to participate in sustainable trading relationships with international businesses and thereby improve their livelihoods.